Sun Behind Clouds
by Hesta's Journal
Summary: The first thing you notice about him today are his eyes. It's strange, because you've been living in the same school as him for six years, but you've never noticed his eyes before.


**Title: _Sun Behind Clouds_**

**Author: _Hesta's Journal_**

**Word Count: _3814, give or take a few._**

**Type of Story: _One shot_.**

**Summary: _The first thing you notice about him today are his eyes. It's strange, because you've been living in the same school as him for six years, but you've never noticed his eyes before. You think maybe it's just because you haven't seen him during the summer holidays, or maybe it's just you being a bit more observant than normal. Either way, you can't help but be struck by their colour, grey like a cloudy day with the sun straining to shine past the clouds._**

**A/N: _Phew! This made me feel extremely tired, for some reason, although I'm not sure why. Anyway, the idea just popped into my head last night, when I was trying to sleep, and I had to get it all off my chest. It's sorta kinda inspired by '500 Days of Summer' - although I didn't realise that until after I finished writing it... :)_**

**_Warning! it's _extremely_ Rose/Scorpius centric. Extremely. Less than a dozen people even get _mentioned_ in it, but the point of the story is how Rose and Scorpius discover their feelings for each other and so the extreme centric-ness was on purpose. Anyway, that's enough A/Ns! Enjoy!_**

**Disclaimer: Has anybody ever heard of the woman behind the power, the twin of JK Rowling? No? Well, that's me. I'm the one who really brainstormed the whole Harry Potter franchise and I just asked JKR to put everything in her name because I don't like publicity. So, yeah, I own everything.**

**P.S. And has anybody ever looked up the phrase 'lying through her teeth' in the dictionary?**

* * *

**Day One - Rose**

The first thing you notice about him today are his eyes. It's strange, because you've been living in the same school as him for six years, but you've never noticed his eyes before. You think maybe it's just because you haven't seen him during the summer holidays, or maybe it's just you being a bit more observant than normal. Either way, you can't help but be struck by their colour, grey like a cloudy day with the sun straining to shine past the clouds.

_Are you okay? _he asks, bemused. Obviously it's just you noticing his eyes, because everybody else in the train compartment is busying themselves talking or playing Exploding Snap. Suddenly, you can't fathom why they aren't all staring with you. His eyes are beautiful, and why haven't you looked at them like this before? Maybe it **is** the heat of the day.

_Rose? _he repeats, a bit worried now. You notice the way the pupils flicker and dilate as the sun shines into the window of the train and then disappears behind clouds again. _You're looking a bit strange, Rose._

_I'm fine,_ you reassure him and send him a smile to prove it. He smiles back, relieved, and you find yourself getting distracted again. This time it's because when he smiles, the corners of his eyes crinkle up slightly and it really does seem as though there is a sun shining behind clouds when he does that. You continue cheerfully, hoping to see a bit more of that light behind his eyes. _I'm just tired. _

He accepts your answer and launches into a detailed account of his summer, of how he hates how stuck-up his grandparents are sometimes and how his mother is constantly nagging at him to improve his posture and his manners. He explains to you how marvellous the Quidditch Cup was and how you really should have been there with him to cheer Britain on - it's the first time that Britain has been in a Quidditch Cup in _ages_, according to him.

When he's finished, you tell him about your summer, too. How Hugo spent half the holidays away because he was with his new Muggle girlfriend, how Mum and Dad told _everybody_ that you were appointed Head Girl and the embarrassment you suffered because of it. You both laugh when you tell him how James and Fred wore Aunt Luna's dirigible plum jewellery and went plum crazy, stuffing the dirigible plums all over their houses and embarrassing Hugo by turning up with the fruits all over them when Hugo was making out with his girlfriend in the backyard.

Conversation has always been easy with Scorpius, yet today you appreciate it more, appreciate how he forms the words and how his eyes light up when you talk about certain topics and how they dim when you talk about others. You try to make sure his eyes stay alight for as long as possible.

**Day Two - Scorpius**

It's strange, how you never realised how much you love her laugh. You ought to have known that by now. After all, you've known her for six years. Today, you can't help but feel that you've wasted those six years because you never really **listened** to her laughter before, only passed it by, more concerned about the reason she was laughing.

To be honest, you first noticed her laugh yesterday, on the Hogwarts Express. Today you really start to listen to her, rather than just feel that strange pleasure that tingles through you when she laughs. You want to understand her laughter, want to discover exactly why she laughs. More than anything, you just want that golden laugh to continue. It sounds bizarre, describing a sound as 'golden', but to you that's what Rose's laugh is. Warm gold, tinted with dashing scarlet. Gryffindor colours, colours that you used to shake your head at, like a dutiful Slytherin ought to. Now they seem the most beautiful colours in the world, outshining your green and silver with ease.

_Scorpius, _she asks you as you gaze off into space, thinking these mysterious new thoughts, _are you okay? You seem a bit more distant than usual today. Head Boys shouldn't be distant too often. They have important duties to handle._

Ah, that laugh. It's only short this time, lasting barely long enough for you to feel that tingling pleasure. You hear the colours, though. _Lucky I've got the Head Girl to pull me back down to earth then, right?_

_Lucky to have me, _she agrees with a sparkle in her eyes. And, secretly, you agree with her.

**Day Three - Rose**

You've always been the one rushing around, trying to do a million different things at once. You can't handle taking life 'slow', as Albus has often pointed out. It's day three, though, three days since you looked at his eyes and really **saw**. Now you're noticing the way his hands move, sometimes slow and sometimes fast. He always uses his hands to talk. For him, gesturing with his hands is as important as speaking with his mouth.

You're actually taking life slow today, at least when he's around. You've actually stopped storming around from one end of Hogwarts to the other as you try to accomplish everything that you think you should. All you want to accomplish right now is understanding the way he moves his hands and why he does it. Why is it as important as speaking to him? You remember him telling you its importance back in fourth-year, but you've never really grasped his reasoning.

No matter. For now, as you talk to him about NEWTs and career options, you find you don't need to understand his hands **this** instant. You can learn slowly, over the next year. You have days, weeks, months. It's probably the first time you've actually said that to yourself, that you can learn slowly, that you have time. Perhaps it's a milestone, of sorts.

**Day Seventeen - Scorpius**

_You've got nice hair, _you blurt out suddenly, in the middle of the conversation. She raises her eyebrows curiously and you feel yourself going pink - Malfoys don't go red - and quickly change the subject.

But it's true. She does have nice hair. A dark, ruddy brown colour that glints ruby when she moves into the sun. Oh Merlin. You're becoming a poet. Not that it changes the fact that her hair is, quite frankly, more than nice. It's beautiful. As beautiful as her laugh.

You look outside at the dark, stormy day and, although you've always been someone who takes life slow, you want time to speed up. You want time to fast-forward, like that strange Muggle contraption that Rose showed you last year - a DVD, was it?. You want time to go forward until there's a lovely, sunny day, so that you can say to Rose _let's go outside_ and then you can watch the way the sun highlights the red colours in her hair.

And you realise that this is some kind of puzzle, because you're not sure what's happening to you but you're trying to piece together the evidence to get the full picture. You're nowhere near done yet.

**Day Forty-Nine - Rose**

Hogsmeade has always been a bit of an ordinary town to you. Nothing special. The only reason you've ever gone is because you needed school supplies or food supplies, or something equally mundane.

That all changes when he asks you to go with him the coming weekend. His eyes, his rapidly moving hands - signs of excitement or nervousness - convince you to say _yes_. No, **make** you say _yes_. You really can't help yourself, not when he asks you in that voice. Which is odd, because he's asked you many things before during your time together at Hogwarts and you've never really been struck by how wonderful that voice of his can be.

It's forty-nine days since you noticed his eyes and you're a bit annoyed that you only **just** started to notice his voice. Sure, you sort of subconsciously noted that it was a comforting voice. What you didn't note until now was how he was always careful about what he said, unless he was caught up in a debate of some kind, something that he was passionate about. You didn't really note how his voice, the way he said his words, had a tendency to invite people to believe in the unbelievable.

You've always been the logical one in the family, the one that inherited your mum's brains, according to Dad. Scorpius's voice, though, tells you that you might just be willing to cast aside logical thoughts, if only you were allowed to hear more.

**Day Fifty-Two - Scorpius**

You're pretty sure that you haven't been this nervous, this excited in a long time. As you walk down the Hogsmeade streets with Rose at your side, all your emotions are bubbling up inside you. And you're surprised at how much you've suddenly come to appreciate that determinedness of hers. Forget physical features, physical looks, that determinedness of hers just about beats her golden laugh and her highlights.

_Come on, Scorpius, let's go into the Shrieking Shack_, she says, tugging you along with her in the direction of the broken down building.

So maybe it's not just determination, maybe it's her sense of adventure that you love as well. You've always let things in life happen to you - you let the Sorting Hat put you in Slytherin, you let Rose befriend you back in first-year, you merely shrugged when your father wanted to send you to Hogwarts and your mother wanted to send you to Beauxbatons (you let them figure it out; you were only eleven at the time, after all, and eleven year olds don't need to make decisions like that if it causes an argument in the family).

Perhaps that's what's so appealing about her. You need somebody to drag you along and spice up your life - you realised this a long time ago - and so Rose is the antidote to your lethargic approach to living.

Realising that maybe you and her would go well together brightens up your day, and although you haven't realised why the sun shines brighter, yet, it's a beginning.

**Day Fifty-Two - Rose**

_Come on, Scorpius, let's go into the Shrieking Shack, _you say and you pull him along behind you. He's staring at you oddly again, with that small smile on his face that you've become accustomed to this term. Like he's looking at you and noticing.

You shrug away this thought, feeling a bit ridiculous even though you know he's not heard you. Instead you clamber over the fence that states 'NO ENTRY' and he follows you. The path is a bit treacherous and it's wildly overgrown; nobody bothers coming this way anymore. You watch out of the corner of your eye as **he** watches **you**, except you know that he's not watching you for the same reason that you're watching him, if that makes any sense. You're watching him, fascinated once more by how graceful he sometimes can be - if he's not too busy trying to cruise through life unnoticed. He's watching you, you realise, because he's trying to make sure that if you fall, he'll be there to catch you.

Unexpected shivers go through your spine, except you're not shivering from the cold, but rather how warm the day has suddenly become now that you're aware.

**Day Seventy-Four - Scorpius**

Her zest for life only continues to appeal to you. You've realised already that you're beginning to like her as more than the friend that you've seen her as since first-year. But it's only a twinge, a sliver of recognition. You're a Malfoy, she's a Weasley and that's that.

Or, at least, that's what you've been saying to yourself recently. And to anybody else who dares suggest that you two might be more than friends. You're normally laid-back, but somehow, when it comes to your now-complicated relationship with Rose, you can't be.

You were so sure about only liking her as a friend.

Until today, when she grabbed your hand and said to you brightly, _I want to go explore the Forbidden Forest. _

_Rose, there's a reason it's called 'Forbidden', _you pointed out with a good-natured sigh, even as she dragged you out onto the Hogwarts grounds. _It's dinner time, anyway._

_Don't be a spoilsport! We're not going to go deep into it. Just the edges and maybe just a little bit further to see what it's like. Mum says there're centaurs there and I kind of want to see,_ her voice was wistful and you relented, however reluctantly. There was a small part of you that noted that, however bookish and know-it-all she was sometimes, she never shied away from the chance to break the rules if it meant she learned something new.

_Just the edges,_ you repeated after her, warningly. She shot you that brilliant smile of hers - the smile that she only ever uses when she desperately wants to get her way - and you realised that maybe you were wrong.

Until today, you were sure that you only felt for her as a friend feels for a friend.

Now you're not so sure.

And a puzzle piece falls into place.

**Day Eighty-Eight - Rose**

You think it's the sense of calmness he possesses, this indefinable air of knowing that he'll land on his feet in the end. You're done noticing his physical features - although you still love to watch his hands, look into his eyes, listen to his voice - and now you've moved onto his personality and his likes and dislikes. It's a bit strange, how you've started to compose a mental list of his virtues. Perhaps it's true, after all, what Hugo said back in third-year when you had a crush on Jimmy Thomas and started to follow him around the school: _you're a stalker, Rose_.

Yet this doesn't feel like the same kind of stalking you did back in third-year. This is a more... subtle and appreciative art. Noticing that he likes to talk about other people rather than himself. Your mental pen scribbles this down on a mental notebook page and adds a mental smiley face next to the words. He loves his father and has a love/hate relationship with his mother. This, too, goes down into that notebook and soon you find that you've got pages upon pages of scribbled facts and smiley faces. You discover that you know almost as well as he does about what he likes and doesn't like.

And when he told you today that he likes your laugh, you can't deny that you wrote down how straightforward he can sometimes be. And you can't deny that you love it.

**Day One-Hundred-&-Twenty-Seven - Scorpius**

Your best mate, Isaiah Davis-Zabini (when you first met him, you recall saying _and you think _**_my_**_ name is posh?_), said to you today that you seem to be spending an awful lot of time obsessing over that Weasley girl. He's one of the people who believe you like her as more than a friend. He's also one of the people who tries his best to encourage it.

Yet it's true, what he says. You have started looking at her more - 'obsessing' seems to be too strong a word. You've actually started to appreciate her flaws, and you wonder why you're also starting to sound like someone from one of those romantic novels your House-Elf delights in reading. Maybe she told you one too many times about that brave wizard who fell in love with the stubborn witch despite all odds and how they lived happily ever after.

Rose's over-enthusiastic approach used to annoy you sometimes, but now you find it strangely endearing. The times that you don't find it endearing, you don't find it annoying either - you just accept it as a part of her that you cannot change.

You recall the times that her ability to worry over the finer details of her work, her hatred of convention and her constantly trying to defy and change peoples' opinions about what they thought - no matter if she actually agreed with them or not; it was a challenge - used to drive you wild. Sometimes it still does, but you find yourself appreciating the fact that she _can_ drive you wild even whilst she does so. You realise that if you didn't care for her as much as you do, she wouldn't be able to evoke such an emotional response from you.

Even her fussy eating habits don't matter anymore. You used to complain about them all the time, asking her if she really wanted to look like the stick figures that her five-year-old cousin Lucy drew in a letter to her once. And she used to swat at you and ask you if you really thought that she was supposed to eat _all_ the food on the Hogwarts tables. Maybe you had, at the time, been comparing her eating habits to your own, which could have been an unfair comparison. After all, you do eat a lot. Even your father comments on it occasionally, and he rarely comments on anything that you do that doesn't involve your schoolwork, unless you ask him to.

You've even started to wonder why you found some of her 'flaws' annoying at all. Some of them weren't even necessarily flaws, just personality quirks. You like that word better than **flaws**. 'Personality quirks' sound friendlier and reflect her better: they tell people that she's not just something they can describe in a few, well-chosen words. She's all over the charts, a living, breathing person that can be unpredictable - another characteristic that can sometimes irritate you - and that's why you love her.

**Day One-Hundred-&-Thirty-Five - Rose**

It took you a long time, but you think you know now that you would like to be more than a friend to him. It wasn't any little thing, either, that made you realise it. You literally just woke up this morning and understood what has been building for a long time. You understood that the reason you love his eyes and his hands and his voice, the reason you love his calmness, his dreaminess (for he is air to your earth), his sense of humour and the fact that he's there for you... you realise that they are only pieces of a puzzle. You haven't put all the pieces together, but each time he talks and you talk and he laughs and you laugh, each time you're there for each other helps to make this puzzle just a little bit more complete. Every moment you experience together adds a piece to this puzzle and you're beginning to see the picture the puzzle is forming.

Except you're not sure.

Yet.

**Day One Hundred-&-Fifty - Scorpius**

Talking with her brings you energy, makes you lean forward and listen intently. Whatever she has to say is worth listening to. Even if it's silly, stupid, and just completely off the top of her head, you listen because it teaches you more about how she works, what makes her say what she says, do what she does.

You're starting to get the feeling she does this when you talk, too, although you're not certain. Maybe it's just your mind playing fanciful tricks on you - it **does** like doing that. Yet somehow, you think, this time it seems to be for real. And the thought makes you smile, and makes her smile because you smiled, and you're suddenly sure that this is **right**.

**Day Two-Hundred-&-Ninety-Five - Rose**

Well, all of this has been building up the entire school year and now it's almost over. You're going to have the feast tonight and everyone's going to say goodbye to each other, perhaps forever. You know that now is the time you have to say something, now is the moment for you to declare what's been happening to you over the year and how much you love him (even his little eccentricities - like how he has a different quill for each subject, how he chooses to order all his books by colour rather than alphabetically or even by size).

So you take his hand, for what feels like the millionth time, and lead him out onto the Hogwarts grounds. He follows you unquestioningly, which is strange, because normally he protests or makes a joke or at least rolls his eyes. Today he's as quiet as he is on exam days.

_Scorpius,_ you start, and you pray that nobody is listening in on this conversation. Even if someone were listening, you'd find out afterwards and hex their arses off, the nosy buggers.

**Day Two-Hundred-&-Ninety-Five - Scorpius**

_Scorpius, _she says and you know what she's going to say. It might sound smug, self-assured, but you know what she's going to say and you know what you're going to say and the world seems to be running perfectly to you at the moment. So you smile at her and ask her not to say anything.

_I do_, you say simply.

So maybe you're not a romantic person, and maybe you like to let life just throw things at you and accept whatever comes your way. You know that you're sometimes too dreamy and that maybe you ought to start concentrating a bit more on what's happening all around you. And you're going to work on your weaknesses and you're going to improve yourself, but you're going to improve yourself for yourself.

And Rose knows who you are. She knows you. She loves you for what you are and, hopefully, she'll love you as you go through life and change. And that's all you can really ask for.

**Day Two-Hundred-&-Ninety-Five**

It's day two-hundred-and-ninety-five and both of you have stopped counting. You stopped counting long ago. Time isn't important anymore, and counting days seems trivial now.

In the end, both of you discover, it's more about 'we' and 'us' than just 'you' or 'me'. You discover that it's more about enjoying life rather than having to figure everything out all the time. Because that's what both of you really want to do: you want to enjoy every second of your time together, with as little worry as possible. And the times ahead are going to be rough, because life is never easy for anybody, but you know you're going to make it through.

And maybe it's this certainty that makes another puzzle piece fall into place and, although it's nowhere near complete - it's going to take a lot longer to finish it - you think you can both just make out the picture.

Sun, lighting up the clouds in its path.


End file.
